Keaton Parks: “I Feel Like I Belong Here.”

February 28, 2023 – Major League Soccer (MLS) – New York City FC News Release

Keaton Parks took to the field in Nashville, Tennessee knowing a milestone had been reached – 100 appearances for New York City Football Club.

A moment of celebration, it represented another step on a fascinating soccer journey for Parks that started in his native Texas.

“I was one of the kids that walked out with the players for FC Dallas,” Parks explained. “It wasn’t just at the FC Dallas stadium, it was at the Cotton Bowl, it was a bigger crowd. I had been going to FC Dallas games for a long time at that point, and it was my first or second year with season tickets. It was cool to be on the field for the first time.”

When he wasn’t basking in the atmosphere generated by a local crowd, Parks was playing soccer. He grew up a keen admirer of Barcelona and their Tiki-Taka style of short passing, and that emphasis on possession remains central to his game today. The journey between Texas and New York was punctuated by a spell in Portugal facilitated by his junior coach Armando Pelaez, who himself had played professionally in the country.

“I first started going there during the summer in high school,” Parks explained. “I would train with a few different teams. The main one I was training with was Feirense – I was training with their youth team. I got a couple of training sessions with Braga. I think we trained once or twice with Sporting. We jumped around a bit training with a few teams here and there, but it was mainly with Feirense. It was tough at first because I went to Portugal not having a contract. I had already de-committed from Southern Methodist University to go take my chances there. I had to go and prove myself and earn a contract when I first went.”

Eventually, Varzim S.C., a team founded in 1915 and plying their trade in the second division, saw enough to hand Parks a professional contract and a spot on their youth team. The bright lights of European soccer weren’t to be found here.

“It was in this very small beach town in northern Portugal,” Parks said of Varzim. “I lived in an apartment right across the street from the stadium – this tiny little stadium – that’s built into the city almost. You can barely tell it’s there unless you’re right next to it. Half the time, we’d train in the stadium, just because we didn’t have fields available. We had one other field that we would use and it would get torn up.

“The training gear was like super outdated, and didn’t always…